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It's hard to say that he's actually changed anything so far and he certainly hasn't stuck to his campaign promises around foreign intervention. On the whole I prefer politicians who don't do very much so maybe that's no bad thing.

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Wanted to reply to something about Trump in the June election thread but it seemed to be getting derailed into Trump discussion, felt guilty.

So here's a Trump thread to save the other one.

Anyway, his America-first, no-foreign-interventions rhetoric is looking more than a bit shaky. What's going on, is he just following his intelligence/military briefings without questioning them?

He had a lot of ex military men pencilled in for posts in his administration before he got elected and his actual written foreign policy manifesto on the Middle East was a lot closer to Clinton's than the verbal rhetoric in the campaign would have led some to believe. With regard to North Korea I am not sure whether any other White House incumbent would have done any differently as the regime in Pyongyang is constantly threatening all and sundry with nuclear annihilation. The truth is that North Korea is as much China's problem as anyone else and they probably want the Fat One out of the way as much as anyone in Washington

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If N Korea gets resolved, one way or another, in Trumps term then he ought to be lauded with the greats.

As long as the resolution doesn't involve nuclear conflict with millions of deaths, sure.

I'm not sure he'll get credit either way though, people fix their ideas early.

It has always seemed odd to me that Obama is so popular in Europe having presided over and assisted in the total disintegration of the Middle East and the subsequent refugee crisis. So he's urbane and charming - er, yes ok but let's look at the facts.....

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As long as the resolution doesn't involve nuclear conflict with millions of deaths, sure.

I'm not sure he'll get credit either way though, people fix their ideas early.

It has always seemed odd to me that Obama is so popular in Europe having presided over and assisted in the total disintegration of the Middle East and the subsequent refugee crisis. So he's urbane and charming - er, yes ok but let's look at the facts.....

To be fair to Obama, ME was Dubya + crews mess.

Obama calmed it down by mainly Drone bombing loads of top people and letting the US special force loose in the ME.

Despit all the Obama is nice claims, he was pretty trigger happy in bombing the baddies. There now no Corbynesque sitting down to discuss things.

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Obama calmed it down by mainly Drone bombing loads of top people and letting the US special force loose in the ME.

Despit all the Obama is nice claims, he was pretty trigger happy in bombing the baddies. There now no Corbynesque sitting down to discuss things.

Iraq was already done, but Libya and Syria were definitely on his watch. So Assad and Gaddafi weren't very nice - is it better now, Barack/Hillary?

I have a slightly conspiraloon theory that the US destabilised the ME deliberately to undermine Europe (the only part of the world that can compete technologically with the US) after the fracking tech was invented in the 90s so the oil was no longer essential. But it could have been just incompetence.

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Overnight more convuluted stuff out of the US regarding Trump and Comey, who knew what, did what, about what, blah, blah. Stuff about Russians, Clinton aids being robbed and murdered, FBI, wikileaks, etc.

Gold & silver are supposedly up on the news and US stock futures down on it.

To be frank, I can't keep up with it all. Nor do I have the inclination to be obsessed with Washington DC politics - our own are bad enough.

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Overnight more convuluted stuff out of the US regarding Trump and Comey, who knew what, did what, about what, blah, blah. Stuff about Russians, Clinton aids being robbed and murdered, FBI, wikileaks, etc.

Gold & silver are supposedly up on the news and US stock futures down on it.

To be frank, I can't keep up with it all. Nor do I have the inclination to be obsessed with Washington DC politics - our own are bad enough.

But it won't go away will it - any of it.

If you mean Seth Rich who leaked DNC material to Wikileaks, he wasn't robbed, he was just shot in the back several times outside his home for no discernible reason.

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If you mean Seth Rich who leaked DNC material to Wikileaks, he wasn't robbed, he was just shot in the back several times outside his home for no discernible reason.

Good point. His wallet was still on him. Some ex cop on Fox News saying that his contacts in the Police have allegedly told him that, again allegedly, they were told to back off the investigation.

Edit:

Good grief - the wikipedia page about his murder has been altered countless times in the past 48 hours in such a way that it now has a large chunk about the Fox News report. It now reads more like an article concerned with rubbishing the Fox News report in favour of Clinton than in the poor guy's murder.

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Is that proven? Is there any evidence to support that claim whatsoever?

Which bit? The wikileaks bit?

From what I read part of all this stuff going on in Washington is some people wanting this investigated. There are claims that the FBI have his laptop and that they have evidence on that laptop that he was in contact with wikileaks. But, as far as I am aware, nothing has been publicly stated by the FBI to confirm this.

Wikileaks did offer a 20,000 USD reward for information leading to the arrest of his murderer though. Why would they do that?

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Is that proven? Is there any evidence to support that claim whatsoever?

That he was shot twice in the back and left with a considerable amount of cash and other valuables on him is pretty much undisputed.

Assuming you mean is leaking to wikileaks proven, then no, not proven. Wikileaks offer of reward for information on the murder, and Assange's comments when interviewed seem to be strongly supportive of the idea that he was the DNC leak.

What began as a conspiracy theory on the internet was pushed into the limelight this week whenWikiLeaksput up a $20,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of Mr Rich's killer.

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, then appeared on Dutch television where he refused to confirm or deny that Mr Rich was a source.

He said: "Whistle-blowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often take very significant risks. I’m suggesting that our sources take risks and they become concerned to see things occurring like that.

"We have to understand how high the stakes are in the United States and that our sources face serious risks."

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I have seen the JA interview and I have to say that I don't find it particularly informative either way, he talks about "our sources taking risks....." but ths link is fuzzy at best, if anything it feels like he wants to claim that SR's murder was connected to WL but steps back from that as unsupported..

We should also remember that WL offers the ability to submit information anonymously and it's also possible that the information came in through an intermediary so it may be that WL/JA do not know if SR was a source or not, and it is also noteworthy the SR was murdered on 10 July but the reward/interview did not happen until about a month later.

if I were to hazard a guess WL/JA do not know if SR was a source or not, they have presumably had the possible connection pointed out to them and for whatever reason have decided to fan the flames with the reward and interview, perhaps they want to believe that SR was a source for reasons of self-agrandizment.

So your unequivical statement that SR was the source of the DNC leaks is in fact speculation based upon the actions of an unreliable organization that may not know either way if he was involed or not, and is something that has been denied by everyone else involved including most notably the family.

You could as easily look at it the other way and that WL do know that SR gave them the info either directly or via a WL intermediary.

We will probably never know. At the end of the day SR was murdered in what seems a very pointless and suspicous killing.

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So your unequivical statement that SR was the source of the DNC leaks is in fact speculation based upon the actions of an unreliable organization that may not know either way if he was involed or not, and is something that has been denied by everyone else involved including most notably the family.

Hardly just me, it's been reported by quite a few news organisations. But yes, I suppose I should have added an allegedly.

"If you mean Seth Rich who allegedly leaked DNC material to Wikileaks, he wasn't robbed, he was just shot in the back several times outside his home for no discernible reason."